Month: February 2018

The record homelessness crisis – with 63,495 New Yorkers sleeping in city shelters tonight – demands a concerted effort from all levels of government, with a focus on effective prevention and affordable housing solutions. Unfortunately, a damning new investigative report by NY1’s Courtney Gross found that the State’s “prison-to-shelter pipeline” is increasingly fueling record homelessness in New York City. In 2014, about 23 percent of the 9,300 people released from State prisons to New York City went directly into the NYC shelter system. That number and percentage have risen drastically in just three years: In 2017, a full 54 percent of the people released to NYC – 4,122 people – entered the shelter system after leaving State prisons. Gross’ report explains how the instability of homelessness compounds the already daunting challenges of reentry after incarceration by following one man struggling through the process.

Gross interviewed Coalition for the Homeless Policy Director Giselle Routhier, who said the alarming rate of people entering shelters immediately after leaving prisons reflects the State’s failure to conduct proper discharge planning, including approving housing options outside the shelter system. “We’ve even seen folks that are coming into the shelter system from prisons who have addresses they think they should be able to go to, and they’re either not approved yet by their parole officers or have been denied,” Routhier said.

Josh Goldfein from the Legal Aid Society added, “It makes the parole officer’s job much easier to have all their clients in one place. If the parole officer has had a bad experience with a particular client, it may just make their life easier to send that client to stay in a shelter.”

To address this glaring and immediate problem, the State can no longer shirk its responsibilities and must engage in appropriate discharge planning for New Yorkers leaving State prisons. Long before someone is released from prison, the State should work to identify appropriate permanent housing options where formerly incarcerated individuals can get back on their feet, and cease relying so heavily on a shelter system that is ill-equipped to meet the extensive needs of such a large number of people.

Every year, thousands of inmates in upstate prisons are granted parole, allowing them to leave prison and return home to New York City. But a NY1 investigation found, more and more, those inmates do not have a home to go to; they go into the shelter system — a system that poses its own challenges to reenter society. NY1 Political Reporter Courtney Gross has a report you will only see on NY1.

The Trump administration’s FY 2019 budget once again includes unprecedented cuts to the nation’s housing programs that could have a drastic impact on New York’s affordability crisis and public housing stock if approved, housing advocates say.

While they would impact tenants across the nation, the cuts would have a particularly harsh impact in New York, which would suffer from the second highest number of lost Housing Choice Vouchers after California, and by far the largest cut in public housing funding.